Hello everyone! Yet another week has come and gone. I think they go by faster and faster each time.
On
Saturday we had our branch activity about family history. Some members
from the stake came and taught us how to do family history. To be
honest, the activity was a failure. Being in a small branch with very
few members its much harder to organize and have good activities. Well,
in total we had 3 or 4 come. It was at the house of one of the members
of the branch who has a little day care at her house, and has some
computers where she gives classes in the summer. Two people who came
were that sister and her husband, one other member, and one other came
later. Then we came plus the members who came to teach us. It was rather
sad to be honest, but it didnt really matter, because they trained my
companion and I too. Now we know how to use familysearch.org and new.familysearch.org
to do family history. So our new plans are go to the houses of the
members and teach them how to do it, that way they cant get out learning
it. When we started the activity it was interesting to see that my
companion got really excited when he started searching for his family
members not in the system. At the same time I felt really interested,
and so did the others that were present. It was really interesting to me
to see how that desire to do family history work took hold really fast.
I think it will have the same effect with the members when we go to
teach them. I hope so anyway. So I am really excited to start teaching
that to the members of the branch.
The other big news, much
bigger actually, is that the way in which we as missionaries work has
been changed dramatically, starting this week. The area presidency of
Mexico proposed a new system of missionary work to the Quorum of the 12
and they approved it. The changes have already happened in several
missions in Mexico and have had amazing results in a very short time. As
far as I knew the system is only in place in Mexico because of the
unique situation Mexico has. Starting tomorrow we will rarely knock
doors or contact people in the streets. We still can, but it is supposed
to be as the Spirit directs. The new idea is that we will spend our
time working with the members, less actives and actives alike in the
time where we arent teaching investigators and then we will teach the
members and rely on them to give us referrals as our main source of
people to teach. That way we strengthen the members and involve them in
missionary work and we have investigators who already have friends who
are members to help them get to know more about the Church. It is really
interesting, and I am really excited to see all the changes that are
going to take place.
Elder Matthew Bray
